Secret
memo reveals US plan to overthrow Taliban regimeBy Ian
Traynor in Tajikistan and Gary Younge in Washington, The
Guardian, 21 September 2001

The US government is pressing
its European allies to agree to a military campaign to topple the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan and replace it with an interim administration under
United Nations auspices.

Diplomatic cables from the Washington
embassy of a key Nato ally, seen by the Guardian, report that the US is
keen to hear allied views on "post-Taliban Afghanistan after the liberation
of the country".

The embassy cable reveals that the
US administration is bent on force to evict the Taliban from power because
of the shelter it has offered Osama bin Laden, named by the White House
as prime suspect for the New York and Washington atrocities on September
11.

The Guardian has also learned that
two large US Hercules transport aircraft landed in Tashkent, capital of
the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, on Tuesday loaded with surveillance
equipment to be installed along the northern Afghan border.

The secret landing represented a
radical departure since it appeared to herald the deployment of squadrons
of US fighters at Uzbekistan's sprawling airfield at Termez, directly on
the border. Such a build-up would incur the wrath of Russia which views
the central Asian republics as its backyard.

The Pentagon yesterday continued
its move to a war footing, with orders for up to 130 heavy bombers, fighters,
aerial refuelling planes and other combat aircraft to be deployed around
the Middle East and Central Asia region.

The navy has also sent an additional
aircraft carrier toward the Middle East region,which along with the air
deployment could place up to 500 US warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf
and Indian Ocean areas.

Tony Blair, in Washington last night
to meet Mr Bush, suggested military strikes inside Afghanistan, targeted
on Bin Laden's training camps, could come in a matter of days. "These people,
if they could, would get access to chemical, biological and nuclear capability.
We have no option but to act," he said.

The US strategy to depose the Taliban
regime is based on more than military thinking. A further plank appears
to entail supporting the campaign of the exiled 86-year-old monarch of
Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah, to return to power by encouraging the guerrilla
army of the Northern Alliance opposition to fall in behind him.

Diplomatic documents seen by the
Guardian show that Washington is funding and organising the travel of several
Northern Alliance figures to Rome to confer with the exiled monarch who
is expected to call for a revolution.

"The king plans to call on all the
Afghan tribes to rise up against the Taliban," the diplomatic cable reported
yesterday, citing the advice of the US administration.

US plans to overthrow the Taliban
regime were revealed when a senior European politician in Washington this
week was told by the US administration that it wanted to hear his country's
views on how Afghanistan should be run after the Taliban were defeated
and that "closer consultations" were necessary.

The Americans also spoke of a role
for the UN in the new "interim administration" for Afghanistan and for
the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in central Asia,
without mentioning Nato.

Washington is routinely sceptical
of the UN and OSCE, but the key role was seen as an attempt to build as
broad a coalition as possible behind the imminent campaign.

The Europeans, Russia, and even China
might be swayed by the unusual US inclusiveness, diplomats said. "It's
a major change of US policy," said one.

The spying mission in Uzbekistan
is also fraught with political risk. The two Hercules could not fly over
Iran, but Turkmenistan, the third ex-Soviet state bordering Afghanistan
granted permission.

However, diplomats said the Turkmens
were less keen to grant overflying rights to US fighter aircraft heading
for the Afghan border.